Canada is often marginalized as being ‘America's hat.' However, if they allow cars like today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Sierra Cosworth up there, you might just want to change that insult to America's helmet.

What, you wouldn't spend $40,000 for a kit-built Countach? That was the not so shocking result yesterday as the imitation Italian went down in an 86% Crack Pipe loss. That car may have been faker than a Hollywood orgasm, but it did show what the ingenuity of a few could accomplish. Today, lets see what you can get when you put a whole car company behind the effort.

The Lamborghini Countach is perhaps the all-time most uncompromising car for speed and jaw dropping …
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By the late ‘70s, Ford found the Cortina (and its German sister Taunus) to be getting a bit long in the tooth, or at least potential buyers did. Its replacement arrived in 1982, and was so slippery and radical a shape it looked like it had just slipped out of either an alien spacecraft, or a cat's butt. Using Porsche's 928 as a styling paragon - no, really I saw that on an old Top Gear - the Sierra's Ford-flavored jelly bean shape did not initially endear itself to car buyers. That being the case, Ford did what any smart car maker would, they added performance to the package - if it's going fast enough, it'll just be a blur, like it was painted by Monet!

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And in making a super Sierra, Ford turned to their old friends, Messrs Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, who together founded the engine builder Turduckin Cosworth. The resultant Sierra Cosworth fitted Ford's crazy aerodynamic body with an equally insane turbo 2-litre, along with SVE suspension upgrades and a mid-hatch whale tail so big you could land Harriers there.

Ford didn't want to just keep the Cosworth Sierra fresh, they wanted to keep it mad fresh, so in '88 they moved the 204-bhp, Garrett TO3 turbo and intercooled YBB from the Sierra hatch to the Sapphire sedan, and created a prototypical Q-ship. This '89 has made its way from Jolly Old, while still keeping all of its Britishness intact. That means that while the leather interior looks untouched, you'll have to get in curbside if you want to touch anything other than glovebox. That's not a big deal, and we've seen other cars here that dress right, so we won't dock it points for that. As noted, the insides look immaculate, and Ford's ‘80s dash design still holds up pretty well. Backing up the YBB is a Borg Warner T5, and the trailing arm rear suspension hugs a limited slip diff to keep all of your slippage limited.

The Cossie's 204 ponies are able to move the Sapphire to sixty from a standstill in about 6 seconds, . Stopping is accomplished through 11-inch front, and 10.75-inch rear discs, which are aided by ABS. In the next model year, a slightly more powerful 4x4 version of this car was introduced in its replacement, but the added weight of the all-wheel drive components made it, heh, heh, slower. This one, at about 2,750-lbs, is among the lightest Cosworth Sierras for the street, although LHD cars carried less content, and hence even less poundage.

What pounds there are on this '89 Cossie, they all look like they just finished pounding the pavement at the Genk, Belgium factory, so clean it appears. The condition could be attributable to the 22,000 miles the seller claims the car has travelled, a pittance and a shame for so prospectively entertaining a ride. That low odo count could conceivably stem from one factor that plays not in the Sierra Cosworth's favor – that of reliability. These cars have a reputation, and like Enron or Broadway musicals based on arachnid comic book characters, that rep is not good.

That brings up an interesting question – where would you go to get this thing serviced should it need a new. . . oh, damn-near anything? That, as well as the chances of getting this illegal alien across the boarder and permanently into the U.S. being somewhere in the neighborhood of slim to none, you might want to think whether you could deal with a car that's as high maintenance as a Kardashian.

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But oh Canada!

Unlike our neighbors to the South, where drug wars and poverty make transplanting there not just undesirable but downright dangerous, Canadian immigration has a lot going for it. There's ice hockey, those irascible kids from Degrassi, Cuban cigars, and all the cops that dress like Dudley Do Right, I mean, who doesn't love those hats?! And not only that but their money has pictures of real girls on them – I'm not saying they're anything you'd wanna' fap to, but at least they aren't just a bunch of creepy old white dudes in your wallet, next to your butt.

So, let's just say you're going to make the move to America's hat, where I'm sure you'll be the toque of the town. Once there, you'll need something to slalom around the moose in, as well as to outrun the polar bears that dot the landscape (extinct my ass!) This Cossie would be an excellent and eclectic choice, guaranteed to gain you exclusivity and get you from one impossibly courteous and clean major metropolis to. Oh say, Toronto in no time at all. But, the question remains, would its $19,900 (in Maple Leafs) price sour your decision to denounce your U.S. citizenship, pull up roots and start appreciating Celine Dion singularly based on her nationality? Or, is would that price have you telling the U.S, see ya', wouldn't wanna' be ya'?

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You decide!

Autotrader, Eh or go here if the ad disappears. H/T to Canuck Chinaman for the northern exposure!

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